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Hiring And Firing Law Information
Hiring
A job interview is a process in which a potential employee is evaluated by an
employer for prospective employment in their firm.
In North America, employment equity laws forbid discrimination based on a number
of classes, such as race, gender, age, sexual orientation, marital status and
others. Asking questions about these protected areas in a job interview is
considered discriminatory, and constitutes an illegal hiring practice. Asking
questions that touch on these areas, such as "Are you willing to
travel/relocate?" (possibly affected by marital status) or "When did you
graduate from school?" (indicative of age) is still usually possible.
Firing
An individual can face termination of employment, or job loss, for one of many
reasons.
The most drastic termination of employment is involuntary termination, in its
most severe form known as "firing", "sacking", "canning", or "shit-canning". A
less severe form is to be laid off or "downsized", which is usually not strictly
related to personal performance but economic cycles or the company's need to
restructure itself.
In a postmodern risk economy, such as that in United States, a large proportion
of workers will be laid off at some time in their life, and often not for
reasons related to performance or ethics.
Firing an employee is expensive and risky in that firings require extensive
documentation (in the event of a wrongful-termination lawsuit), and because
fired employees may sue their former employers, disclose trade secrets to
competitors, or expose illegal practices. Finally, in the United States,
unemployment benefits are financed by companies, and a firm's unemployment costs
increase with each worker laid off or fired.
Types of Termination:
Forced Resignations
In addition to the risks and costs of firing an employee, firing a high-profile
individual such as a school superintendent, an executive, or a public official
often leads to rumor and factionalism; people who sympathized with the fired
employee will be drawn against the person responsible. To avoid this, and to
allow the dismissed employee to "save face" in a more "graceful" exit, the
employer will often ask the employee to resign "voluntarily" from his or her
position. If the employee chooses not to resign, the processes necessary to fire
him or her will be pursued, and the employee will usually be fired. It thus
becomes unclear whether or not the resignation was forced or voluntary, and this
opaqueness benefits both parties.
High-profile individuals, when forced to resign from a job, will often claim
that they resigned over "creative differences" or "to spend more time with my
family".
Changes of Conditions
When Expression Center had gotten too big and still SUCKED they began laying off
staff.. Firms that wish for an employee to exit on his or her own accord, but do
not wish to pursue firing or forced resignation, may degrade the employee's
working conditions, hoping that he or she will leave "voluntarily". The employee
may be moved to a different geographical location, assigned to an undesirable
shift, given too few hours if part time, demoted, or relegated to a menial task,
or assigned to work in uncomfortable conditions. Other forms of manipulation may
be used, such as being unfairly hostile to the employee, and punishing him or
her for things that are deliberately overlooked with other employees.
Such tactics may amount to constructive dismissal, which is illegal in some
jurisdictions.
Layoffs and furloughs
Finally, termination of employment can happen as a result of layoffs, also known
as "downsizing" or "redundancy", which are not firings. A laid-off employee's
job is terminated and not re-filled, because the company wishes to reduce its
size or operations, not for performance-related reasons. In rare cases, laid-off
employees are re-hired by their respective companies, though by this time they
have usually found new jobs.
For more free legal information on Employment Laws, please use the
links below:
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